[clonedrad]

I've had cable failures on both my headphones and IEMs, and am thinking that beyond just fixing that, I'd like to try adding an inline cable remote — the kind of thing with three vol+/vol-/pause buttons that just fire a short/resistance across the mic line: I use both on the move a *lot*. Has anybody any experience of doing this, and any recommendations to make? Looking in the *huge* general DIY thread, my search-fu seemed to fail me.

Two approaches I'm contemplating are to buy parts, or to cannibalise somebody else's cable (e.g. a Sennheiser one). Only one of the sticky DIY suppliers seems relevant: Luna sell things like this, for example:

http://www.lunashops.com/goods.php?id=4770

.. they look kindof cheap and tacky though, hence the thought of cannibalising something that might be of slightly higher quality.

Comments & suggestions welcome — particularly UK-specific ones (I see Toxic Cables used to be a good place to go, but now seems defunct).

 

[clonedrad]

In case it's of use to anyone else, I replaced the failing Y join in my Grados with a REAN 3.5mm stereo plug and line socket pair. This has worked pretty well, and enabled me to swap in a 4-way cable with standard Android control buttons (volume up/down, pause/play) while I'm out and about: really convenient. I'm using a $10 Sennheiser one from lunashops — may not be the best, but quality's less of an issue while you're outside anyway.

Interesting note on the Grado Y join: this ugly construct with its unpleasant cheap-looking black plastic tubing running to the cans is actually there for a purpose: the cable cores run uninterrupted from the stereo jack to your headphones — the conductors aren't broken in the Y, merely separated out into two pairs, each then threaded through the tubing to its respective earpiece. In my case, since the cable was already broken, I'd nothing to lose by actually cutting the conductors and soldering in the two connectors.

REAN's connectors come to suit a variety of cable diameters; in this case I went for 4mm on both sides: that's easily big enough for the tubes taking the wires to the earpieces on the top side, but on the bottom side with the original Grado 5mm cable you'll need to shave a tiny bit off the outside of the insulation to get it into the back of the connector. Once you're in though, you can push the rest through with a little careful effort. (I had the same experience with a Neutrik right-angled 3.5mm jack at the other end of the cable.) I expect the addition of the jack connection will have damaged signal quality, but it's beyond my ears to notice it.

One warning to anyone seeking to replicate this: the ugly plastic tube running to the earpieces is not remotely heatproof, so if you're finishing off your work with a bit of heatshrink tubing as a last bit of cable protection, be super careful to use the absolute minimum of heat when shrinking your tubing around that. That said, my Grados are close to a decade old, so maybe they're using something better than that now.

Would upload a photo but as others have reported elsewhere, there doesn't seem to be a button to do that for me; possibly a new user thing?

 

[clonedrad]

.. and like magic suddenly I can post photos, yay. Here's the new Y join so: